446 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



laws more or less clearly ascertained. Babel thus takes its place 

 quietly among the sacred myths. 



Secondly, as to the origin of writing, we have the more emi- 

 nent theologians at first insisting that God taught Adam to 

 write ; next we find them gradually retreating from this position, 

 but insisting that writing was taught to the world by Noah. 

 After the retreat from this position, we find them insisting that it 

 was Moses whom God taught to write. But scientific modes of 

 thought still progressed, and we next have influential theologians 

 agreeing that writing was a Mosaic invention ; this is followed by 

 another theological retreat to the position that writing was a 

 post-Mosaic invention. Finally, all the positions are relinquished, 

 save by some few skirmishers who appear now and then upon the 

 horizon, making attempts to defend some subtle method of incor- 

 porating the Babel myth into modern science. 



Just after the middle of the nineteenth century a new system 

 of theological defense appears. It is that which is seen in the 

 history of almost every science after it has successfully fought 

 its way through the theological period the declaration that the 

 scientific discoveries in question are nothing new, but have really 

 always been known and held by the Church, and that they simply 

 substantiate the position taken by the Church. This new conten- 

 tion, which always betokens the last gasp of theological resistance 

 to science, was now echoed from land to land. In 1856 it was 

 given forth by a divine of the Anglican Church, Archdeacon 

 Pratt, of Calcutta. He gives a long list of eminent philologists 

 who had done most to destroy the old supernatural view of lan- 

 guage, reads into their utterances his own wishes, and then ex- 

 claims, " So singularly do their labors confirm the literal truth of 

 Scripture." 



Two years later this contention is echoed from the American 

 Presbyterian Church, and Dr. B. W. Dwight, having stigmatized 

 as " infidels " those who have not incorporated into their science 

 the literal acceptance of Hebrew legend, declares that "chro- 

 nology, ethnography, and etymology have all been tortured in 

 vain to make them contradict the Mosaic account of the early 

 history of man." Twelve years later another echo comes from 

 the Roman Catholic Church. The Rev. Dr. Baylee, Principal of 

 the College of St. Aidan's in England, declares, " With regard to 

 the varieties of human language, the account of the confusion of 

 tongues is receiving daily confirmation by all the recent discov- 

 eries in comparative philology." And this is echoed in the same 

 year (1870) from the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, 

 when Dr. John Eadie, Professor of Biblical Literature and Exe- 

 gesis, declares that "comparative philology has established the 

 miracle of Babel." 



